The width of the thread of a tire

"It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning's winning." ~ Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Fast and Furious

But what if the margin of victory is a millimetre. 0.0003 of a second, or something like that. They had to blow the picture up hundred of times over to tell for sure that Marcel Kittel had beaten Edvald Boasson Hagen in the sprint. The standard photo finish picture looks a draw every time. And until recent technology made such blow up images possible, that is what it would have been.

Looking Back - The 1997 Tour de France, episode 4: The sprinters take over

Sunday, July 6, 1997

The following morning only 3,943km separated the riders from the finish in Paris. To get there the route would circle France in a counter clockwise direction hitting the Pyrenees first. Long before the mountains though came the sprinters stages. July 6 was the first one; a 192km ride to Froges les Eaux.

The Tour moves on and so does the yellow jersey

The Tour de France moves at a frantic pace, and not only on the road. Today's newspaper is tomorrow's chip wrapper, as the old saying goes. Yesterday morning the papers in France led with the Sagan-Cavendish incident, but today it is already old news. It was the first summit finish of the Tour, and the climbers have taken over the narrative.

The first mountain stage will do that. Everything that has gone before no longer matters. Peter Sagan and Mark Cavendish may be two of the faces of the sport, but we all know the Tour belongs to those who can ride in the mountains. The incident that eliminated the pair will live long in the memory, and go down in Tour history, but the race goes on. It always does.

Fireworks on the 4th July...in France: Sagan disqualified and sent home

Let me start right at the top with the major news to come out of today's stage: Peter Sagan has been disqualified from the Tour de France and sent home. A bombshell that nobody seen coming. Not before the stage and not even after the incident that led to the penalty.

For a lot of this stage I thought the talking point would be about how this was the most boring stage of the Tour. In some ways it was, but it won't be remembered that way anymore. I felt that once we had digested another bunch gallop that talk would centre around Guillaume van Keirsbulck's brave solo attack. But bunch gallops in themselves often throw up drama and there was enough inside the final kilometre of today's stage to keep everyone talking well into the night.

Looking Back - The 1997 Tour de France, episode 3: Boardman regains his prologue crown

Saturday, July 5, 1997

It was a sunny day in Rouen on Saturday, July 5, 1997, and Chris Boardman was happy. The Englishman was a prologue specialist and this was the prologue of the Tour de France. But it was the sunshine that mattered to him most.

Advantage Froome, and Sky, on the opening weekend

We are three stages in now and each stage has been different than the other. The first was a time-trial that gave us a classification and the chance to look at time gaps. The second stage gave the sprinters a turn to stretch their legs. And the third stage was designed to shake up the sharp end of that classification with a short but steep uphill finish. And while Geraint Thomas may have presented himself as a surprise winner of that time-trial, Marcel Kittel and Peter Sagan winning the next two stages, was right on script.

I spent the opening weekend of the Tour out of town. It was the Canada Day 150th anniversary celebrations on the day the Tour started. The celebrations ran through the weekend and into Monday. I was able to watch the Tour, or at least the parts that mattered, and I even clocked up 185km of riding. But I had no time, nor desire, to sit in from of a computer and write about the Tour. Best to let it all play out anyway; let it settle down, bed in, and give me pause for thought before making comment. And so here I am then on Monday evening, looking back at what has been over the opening weekend.

Looking Back - The 1997 Tour de France, episode 2: Building up

Friday, July 4, 1997

In those days, as a teenager, I did a lot of my own cycling but watched far less. In many ways my cycling season, with regards to the television, began and ended with the Tour. The rest of the year was football. Sometimes I would go out of my way to watch Paris-Roubaix, but there was little beyond that. I lived for the Tour and my month of July belonged to it; set to a soundtrack of the voices of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.